open; Dry your smoke-stung eyes

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Post-Rivain catch-up, gifts for friends, general open in and around Skyhold things
WHEN: August (timey-wimey if needed)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: High likelihood of Dairsmuid being discussed so annulments etc. Will update if/when needed. If you'd like a starter let me know but feel free to make your own!

Comments

[foxsays]

"And most people were probably lucky not to burn or get heatsick." Even Araceli had wrapped a thin scarf about herself since she was used to a measure of damp heat rather than the arid baking dust of the Approach stretching out endlessly until it shimmered into a haze. "I thought it sounded ridiculous enough to be funny, honestly, when I was away in Dairsmuid studying. But we don't do things like that where I come from." Oh there are a few tokens but since there hasn't been the right moment to give Korrin the one she's had made? She's keeping her mouth shut. Just to be safe. Since not a soul told Araceli about dragon tooth necklaces until one was slipped around her neck.

If Beleth ever were inclined to ask about Castilean birth control? Prayer. Or something like it. Ask the sea for a child, ask the sea to move through you because men are one half, women are the other, and ask the moon for good measure as a women when the moon is the sea too and she changes same as a woman does each month, each year. Wear a sea horse amulet about your throat and bless yourself, picture the child before the act. Then you have a child in nine months time. You have to want enough for the sea to know; the sea has to feed that child, has to provide for it, the moon has to watch over it every night but the few she hides her face from the world. In Castileos they never forgot how precious their gifts were, and that children are a thing to always be grateful for.

(No child ever feels without a place. No child is ever hurt from that. The hurts come from others but never from being unwanted, abandoned, left to fend for themselves. Zimevur is the one nation that allows that and their children make the long voyage to Castileos. It doesn't really help relations much.)

"Do you know enough about him well enough to fake a note? I used to spend a small fortune if I needed a forger for certain jobs, but I paid that small fortune because I needed a forger, because they knew exactly how to mimic a hand, how to write a letter to someone as if they had been that person their whole life." The words don't come easily when as much as she sympathises with the want, she still isn't sure she should be encouraging Beleth or putting ideas in her head, but she at least can take solace in being reasonably sure there isn't a forger. Outside of Zevran himself probably or perhaps some of the Kestrels. "Will you be going alone? When you have to watch to make sure you are able to poison him? Every place has a rhythm and a heartbeat."

Araceli-the-thief can only say so much. Araceli-the-queensguard could say so much more but would Beleth even wish to know that Araceli as much as she knows this one? She cannot say, nor does she want to give away that secret for something such as this.

[arlathvhen]

She listens to Araceli, because the advice is solid, and that note is definitely going to be the cornerstone of her plan. "I was planning on visiting the place, first, delivering a message to him. That'll give me a chance to see him, get a feel for him. And I'm going to try to look around, see where he sleeps, get an idea for the layout." She hadn't been planning on giving Araceli the entire run down, but--well, it couldn't hurt. Maybe Araceli would see more potential flaws that Beleth hadn't.

"The idea is that he'll have to write a message in return to the one that I give him, and then I'll have an example of his writing. If that's not enough--I can try swiping some writing from him while I'm there. Once I've got the information I need, I'm going to step back--probably return to Skyhold. Maybe I can find a forger here. Or see if Zevran knows one." Except she's not going to be asking Zevran, because Zevran thinks that Cade should be dealing with this himself. But Beleth knows that isn't going to work.

"I'll put the second part into motion once I have the note made up. But I'll be going alone. I can't ask anyone to put themselves at risk for this. This isn't anything for the Inquisition, this is just...personal." And she couldn't risk anyone figuring out who was involved that made it personal.

"--But. Sister Nightingale could just tell me to forget about it, so." She twists her lips, "Who knows. All this planning might be for naught."

[foxsays]

"And if they don't let you in? I'm a thief. Being where I shouldn't be is how I make my living Beleth, and sometimes that does mean going in the front door if I can go to a fancy party, or get an invite on the arm of someone but I have advantages." Araceli looks like she belongs, and if she does not, it's easy to fake; put on the right dress, dig out the right pearls for about her throat, line her eyes a particular way, affect just the right mannerisms. This is--

"You will be watched," is what she settles on after another pause, matter-of-fact, a thief giving advice because Araceli has lived that life since she was fifteen. She has felt so many eyes upon her and Beleth is going to be going into a place where she will stick out like a sore thumb with her Vallaslin. "I know enough of the history here to know that there is very little love lost between your people and the Chantry. What will you do if you cannot do more than give him a note? If you are turned away at the door? Suppose you say it is to be delivered to his hands only, what is to stop them from shutting the door in your face because who are you to them? Nothing and no one. Just some Dalish elf, same as I was just some whore's whelp, some pirate's get."

Do you remember that time on the roof when two prospective students met a teacher? About being underestimated and how it can be used to your advantage? All the same there are times when you are just a girl, and the world is so much bigger than you alone are. The world is very cruel when it likes to remind you of that and Araceli takes no pleasure in it when she picks the plan apart the way she would when planning her own, when working out some mission with the guards as she lifts another little cake and splits it neatly in half.

"I am not trying to discourage you, not precisely. But you are speaking of murder with a likelihood of your own neck, and other reputations that might be traced back no matter how careful you might be because we are not the only ones with spies and scouts and information. And say that Sister Nightingale tells you no, would you be able to set it all aside and sweep your heart and mind clear of it, just so?"